Wordsworth and the Romantics
Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
English Romantics Timeline
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The English Romantics 1798-1832 (from the publication of Wordsworth's
Lyrical Ballads to the Reform Bill of 1832).
Poets:
Novelists:
• William Blake (1757-1827)
Walter Scott (1771-1832)
• William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Jane Austen (1775-1817)
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)
Mary Shelley (1797-1851)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------• George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) (died at 36 in Greece from illness)
• Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) (drowned at 30)
• John Keats (1795-1821) (died of "consumption"--tuberculosis--at 26).
Cover, First Edition, Lyrical Ballads
England
with Location of Lake District
Lake District
Lake District
Poems in our edition from Lyrical Ballads
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“We are Seven,” Wordsworth
“The Thorn”
“Tintern Abbey”
“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” (2nd vol.,
1800)
• The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
(Coleridge)
In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phœbus lifts his golden fire:
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;
A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire;
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain.
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain.
In vain to me the smiling mornings shine,
And reddening Phœbus lifts his golden fire:
The birds in vain their amorous descant join,
Or cheerful fields resume their green attire.
These ears, alas! for other notes repine;
A different object do these eyes require;
My lonely anguish melts no heart but mine;
And in my breast the imperfect joys expire;
Yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer,
And new-born pleasure brings to happier men;
The fields to all their wonted tribute bear;
To warm their little loves the birds complain.
I fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear,
And weep the more because I weep in vain.
It will easily be perceived, that the only part of
this Sonnet which is of any value is the lines printed
in Italics; it is equally obvious, that, except in the
rhyme, and in the use of the single word ’fruitless’ for
fruitlessly, which is so far a defect, the language of
these lines does in no respect differ from that of
prose.
By the foregoing quotation it has been shown
that the language of Prose may yet be well adapted to
Poetry; and it was previously asserted, that a large
portion of the language of every good poem can in no
respect differ from that of good Prose. We will go
further. It may be safely affirmed, that there neither
is, nor can be, any essential difference between the
language of prose and metrical composition.
Neo-Classical Conventions
•
Thomas Gray, Correspondence
– “[English] poetry…has a language peculiar to itself: to which almost
every one that has written has added something, by enriching it
with foreign idioms and derivatives. Nay, sometimes words of their
own composition, or invention.”
– The qualities of poetic language included
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Latinisms
(gelid, mellifluous, concoctive)
Stock phrases (“the feather’d choir,” “the finny tribe,” “our fleecy wealth,” “the wingy swarm,”
and the “foodful brine”
“Poetic” words (“gales” which “blow”; “vales” which are often “verdant”; “swain” and “nymph”;
“azure main”; “tender tears”; “solemn hour”
Personification (“Youth at the prow and Pleasure at the helm”)
Compound adjectives (“rosy-bloomed Hours”; “incense-breathing morn”; “blood-happy hounds”
Adjectives ending in “y” (“plumy,” “wingy,” “balmy,” “spiry,” “brooky”)
Spenserian words (i.e. used by Edmund Spenser): “ween,” “wight,” “mickle,” “perdie,”
“withouten”
Wordsworth’s Definition of
“Good Poetry” (265)
• For all good poetry is the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings: but though this
be true, poems to which any value can be
attached, were never produced on any variety
of subjects but by a man who, being
possessed of more than usual organic
sensibility, had also thought long and deeply.
I have said that poetry is the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its
origin from emotion recollected in
tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till,
by a species of reaction, the tranquillity
gradually disappears, and an emotion,
kindred to that which was before the subject
of contemplation, is gradually produced, and
does itself actually exist in the mind. (273)
For the human mind is capable of being
excited without the application of gross and
violent stimulants; and he must have a very
faint perception of its beauty and dignity who
does not know this, and who does not further
know, that one being is elevated above
another, in proportion as he possesses this
capability. It has therefore appeared to me,
that to endeavour to produce or enlarge this
capability is one of the best services in which,
at any period, a Writer can be engaged; but
this service, excellent at all times, is especially
so at the present day.
For a multitude of causes, unknown to former times,
are now acting with a combined force to blunt the
discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it
for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of
almost savage torpor. The most effective of these
causes are the great national events which are daily
taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men
in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations
produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which
the rapid communication of intelligence hourly
gratifies. To this tendency of life and manners the
literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country
have conformed themselves. The invaluable works of
our elder writers, I had almost said the works of
Shakespeare and Milton, are driven into neglect by
frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies,
and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.—
“A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal” (1800)
A slumber did my spirit seal,
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
An Excerpt from William Wordsworth’s
“Prospectus” to The Excursion
Not Chaos, not
The darkest pit of lowest Erebus,
… can breed such fear and awe
As fall upon us often when we look
Into our Minds, into the Mind of Man—
My haunt, and the main region of my song
--Beauty--a living Presence of the earth,
Surpassing the most fair ideal Forms
Which craft of delicate Spirits hath composed
From earth's materials--waits upon my steps;
Pitches her tents before me as I move,
An hourly neighbour.
Thorn Tree in Lake District
Tintern Abbey
River Wye
Walking tour
through Wales
United Kingdom
“Tintern Abbey”
For thou are with me here upon the banks
… in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read
My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! Yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once….
“Tintern Abbey”
…Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her….
…For she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is ….
Shall e’er prevail against us….
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
…wilt thou forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together….
…Nor wilt thou then forget,
That after many wanderings, many years
of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!
The Pedlar to the narrator
in The Ruined Cottage
But we have known that there is often found,
In mournful thoughts, and always might be found,
A power to virtue friendly; were’t not so,
I am a dreamer among men, indeed
An idle dreamer. ‘Tis a common tale,
By moving accidents uncharactered,
A tale of silent suffering, hardly clothed
In bodily form, and to the grosser sense
But ill adapted, scarcely palpable
To him who does not think….
The Ruined Cottage
… At the door arrived,
I found that she was absent. In the shade,
Where now we sit, I waited her return.
Her cottage, then a cheerful object, wore
Its customary look, -- only, it seemed,
The honeysuckle, crowding round the porch,
Hung down in heavier tufts; and that bright weed,
The yellow stone-crop, suffered to take root
Along the window's edge, profusely grew,
Blinding the lower panes.
The narrator to the reader
in The Ruined Cottage
…[I] traced…
That secret spirit of humanity
Which, mid the calm oblivious tendencies
Of nature, ‘mid her plants, her weeds, and flowers,
And silent overgrowings, still survived.
The pedlar to the narrator
in The Ruined Cottage
“My friend, enough to sorrow have you given,….
She sleeps in the calm earth, and peace is here.
I well remember that those very plumes,
Those weeds…did to my heart convey
So still an image of tranquillity,…
Amid the uneasy thoughts which filled my mind,
That what we feel of sorrow and despair
From ruin and from change…
Appeared an idle dream that could not live
Where meditation was.”
An Excerpt from William Wordsworth’s
“Prospectus” to The Excursion
Paradise, and groves
Elysian, Fortunate Fields--like those of old
Sought in the Atlantic Main--why should they be
A history only of departed things,
Or a mere fiction of what never was?
For the discerning intellect of Man,
When wedded to this goodly universe
In love and holy passion, shall find these
A simple produce of the common day.
Photograph of Piel Castle
Photograph of Piel Castle (NW England)
George Beaumont,
Peele Castle, in a Storm
Albatross
Albatross